Mississippi University for Women has been given the approval to name two buildings in honor of a pair of educators who devoted almost 60 years of combined experience in shaping the lives of students from age 6 to their 20s.
Alma Turner, who spent 18 years as a teacher and principal at the MUW-supported Demonstration School elementary school, and Eugenia Summer, who taught art at the W for 40 years, will be honored with their names on the buildings where they once taught.
The Institutions of Higher Learning board approved the naming of the buildings after two of The W’s outstanding alumnae.
“I don’t even have words to describe my feelings. I never imagined this in my wildest dreams,” said Turner, 70. “To have this honor, well, I’m humbled. I want Dr. [Jim] Borsig [MUW president] and everyone at The W to know how honored I am by this.”
Turner came to the “Dem School” in 1977 as a teacher, assuming the additional role of principal in 1985. She retired in 1995. Although she served as an educator before and after her time at the Dem School, she confessed the school held a special place in her heart.
“I always had a deep, deep love for the Dem School and what I did there as a teacher and an administrator. I couldn’t wait to get to school every morning,” Turner said.
The school, which opened in 1907 as the state’s first laboratory school, was a collaboration between the city of Columbus’ school district and The W, which provided the school facilities, stipends for faculty and staff and assisted in the classroom by providing its education majors a chance to work with students as they pursued their teaching degrees.
For decades, The Dem School was considered the model neighborhood school, with an energized faculty and outstanding support of parents and the university.
“We had such a great faculty, really, more like a family,” Turner said. “And the parents were just wonderful. That was important to us. We also encouraged parents to come and not be apart from, but a part of, what we were doing.”
Turner said The W’s support was also critical to the school’s success.
“That was such a great asset for us,” she said. “Any time you can have the school and university working together as partners, it just adds so much.”
The school closed in 2005 and has remained shuttered since.
University officials say they will announce plans for the new “Turner Building” Saturday during the Dem School’s annual reunion. The state legislature provided $7.1 million for renovations for the building, which will be used by the university’s nursing and speech pathology programs.
Turner earned her degree in elementary and special education from MUW in 1981. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Mississippi Valley State University and a master’s in elementary education from Delta State University.
Turner said the date for an official dedication has not yet be set. She wonders what it will be like to walk into the place where she served so diligently for the better part of two decades and find her name on the building.
“It will be a feeling I’ve never experienced before, I’m sure of that,” she said. “I just can’t imagine.”
Summer Building
If Yankee Stadium was “The House That Ruth Built,” MUW’s Art and Design Building could rightfully be called “The House that Summer Built,” said former MUW art professor Larry Feeney.
“I can’t think of anything more appropriate than naming the arts building after her,” said Feeney, who taught with Summer for almost 20 years. “She was just an impressive woman, a great, great teacher who knew how to connect with students in a very personal way, an excellent administrator and a wonderful artists in her own right. You couldn’t make a better choice.”
Summer died in April at age 92.
She was born in the Delta, earned her degree from what was then known as Mississippi State College for Women in 1945 and then trained at some of the most prestigious art schools in the nation before returning to The W in 1947. For 40 years, she was a driving force in the university’s arts programs, first as a teacher, but also as an assistant dean, division head and professor emerita. She retired in 1987.
“She was pretty amazing,” Feeney said. “It seemed like she just has a natural talent for everything she put her hand to. When I first got here, she was a sculptor, but she began painting, specializing in watercolors, acrylic and Alkyd paints.”
Summer’s work was featured in galleries throughout the South, but her art was only one aspect of her talents, Feeney said.
“There didn’t seem to be anything she couldn’t do,” he said. “When she got involved in something, she was really involved, but she did it an a way that wasn’t overbearing. A lot of people have opinions: What separated her was that she had ideas and she had this wonderful personality.
“If she called you and asked you to do something, it was impossible to tell her no. She was just a wonderful person and did so much for The W,” Feeney added.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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